Trail Blazers: Draft prep continues abroad this week

One day after hosting a second wave of NBA draft prospects in a predraft workout, the Trail Blazers will hit the road to continue their draft preparation.

A contingent of team personnel — including director of college scouting Chad Buchanan, director of NBA scouting Michael Born and assistant coach Bill Bayno — will travel to Treviso, Italy later this week for the Adidas Eurocamp, which runs June 5-7.

Eurohopes.com has updated a tentative list of the the players who will participate in the group workout, which includes 29 international prospects.

The Blazers do not view this international draft class as being a particularly strong one, but they do have a rich recent history of plucking talent from the international pool. In each of the six years general manager Kevin Pritchard has been with the organization, they've gone abroad to either draft or acquire the draft rights to foreign players.

Last year, the Blazers drafted Spaniard Victor Claver with the 22nd overall selection and Australian point guard Patty Mills with pick No. 55. The year before that, they landed starting forward Nicolas Batum with the 25th overall pick in a trade with the Houston Rockets.

The 2007 draft, best known for the No. 1 overall selection of Greg Oden, netted two foreign players as the Blazers traded for the draft rights to reserve guard Rudy Fernandez and Finnish point guard Petteri Koponen. And a year before that, the Blazers drafted forward Joel Freeland of England and acquired the draft rights to point guard Sergio Rodriguez of Spain.

The list goes on and on.

Will they pursue more international talent during the June 24 draft? According to the latest mock draft at DraftExpress.com, the answer is yes. At the very least, the scouting continues abroad this week.